[ Thanks to billy for this link.
]
“Then I decided to check out the newsgroups to find some more
information to get things running how I wanted them. I don’t recall
which newsgroup it was, but I got a huge shock when I found out how
insecure my box could be now that I had the ability to run all
these funky services that I thought were run only by servers. Could
sendmail really be running? Why? Is some unknown person trying an
exploit on my ftp port? Run ‘netstat -a’ I was told by an anonymous
usenet poster. Lo and behold, I had not just one or two services
actively “listening” for connections, but many.”
“Why would a home user need any of these services running?
The way I see it, there are too many home users trying Linux
nowadays for most every possible service to be running on a stock
install. If any of these users are like myself, they install
everything just so they can see what is available. Then not only do
they have to go through and shut down unnecessary services like
sendmail, ftp, portmap, yp, etc, but they have to learn how to do
this first. Linux is mainly a server OS, and has been for years.
Most administrators know what any given box is going to be doing
before it’s even installed. It makes sense to me that
administrators would to have to turn any given service on, rather
than turning off what they don’t want. That directly relates to
home users as well. Especially the new ones just now trying Linux
with their cable or ADSL modem connected 24/7.”